USB 3.0 On A Stick: Super Talent's RAIDDrive 64 GB
Table of contents
- 1. Does USB 3.0 Stick Out On Thumb Drives?
- 2. USB 3.0 Basics And Applications
- 3. Silicon Power eSATA/USB SSD (eSATA, USB 2.0, 32 GB)
- 4. OCZ Throttle (eSATA, USB 2.0, 8 GB)
Wondering how fast USB 3.0 runs compared to USB 2.0 and eSATA? We take three flash-based thumb drives and run them through our storage benchmarks. We don't expect to see the interface's 500 MB/s maximum any time soon, but the results might surprise you.
USB 3.0 is finally here. More and more motherboards incorporate an additional controller to support the fast interface. Storage vendors are releasing new USB 3.0 products almost weekly. We decided to look at the impact this new interface will have on thumb drives by comparing it with USB 2.0 and eSATA.
480 Mb/s Not Enough?
480 Mb/s is the gross transfer speed of USB 2.0, which translates into 60 MB/s. Effectively, however, USB 2.0 devices max out at around 35 MB/s and, depending on file size, selected partition, and format, you'll probably see less than that.
While USB 2.0 performance is sufficient for occasional use, it bottlenecks power users. We don't want to wait around moving multi-gigabyte archives at 35 MB/s or less. There are a number of different scenarios you could conceive where USB 2.0 is simply insufficient, but the simple truth is that performance is usually perceived as inadequate if the waiting extends beyond just a few minutes.
USB 3.0 to the Rescue
With 5 Gb/s gross throughput, USB 3.0 provides ten times the bandwidth of USB 2.0. We released an introductory article on SuperSpeed USB 3.0 in June 2009, looked at the implications on insufficient platform bandwidth in March 2010, and provided a first roundup on USB 3.0 enclosures just recently.
Now it’s time to look at what USB 3.0 does for thumb drives. To get the full picture, we decided not only to include USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 performance, but also two products that support eSATA, which goes up to 3 Gb/s gross bandwidth and may still challenge USB 3.0.
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Latest Super Talent reviews
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- USB 3.0 On A Stick: Super Talent's RAIDDrive 64 GB
Personally, I think that's quite good. It's pretty much matching my Intel SSD anyway...
plse fix your css .. the grey bars over the text are annoying.
Hi, are there any reviews out there for the MX technology FX USB 3.0 flash drive against the Supertalent or Silicon Power drives? I only found the MX tech FX drive on this site (http://ssdeurope.com/flash-products-usb-30-c-3_81.html) but wasn't sure about what the real life throughputs. It wasn't too expensive, so I wasn't sure whether its a good one.
Did anyone have any experience with this?
As far as flash memory is concerned, having usb3 seems pointless. Every single flash device i've had, usb flash, sata flash etc. starts developing errors after a while, which gradually increase in severity until the unit needs reformatting and eventually binning. Flash memory is simply only good for as long as you are benchmarking because when they are new they perform like wild fire, but if actually try to use the devices for real work, they die a slow death. Like it or not, thats flash technology.
An interesting aspect is to install a USB 3.0 exapnasion card onto an older pc and install a complete operating system and all applications into USB 3.0 flash pen, running the whole pc from the usb 3 pen drive. This should give a nice boost to operating performance of a pc and extend the lifecycle of a pc by a few more years.
Well, I disagree with the comment made by Anonymous 11/06/2010. We have succesfully used many SSDs without experiecing any problems for over 2 years. Rule of the thumb though is: You pay less and you get worse quality.
One key aspect is the usage of certain controllers (Jmicron for example) which is terrible when you want Raid systems and we had bad experiences with most Flash products using this controller... also Indilinx controller normally do not like RAID 0... Intel, Samsung, OCZ included...
Furthermore, cheap SSDs will have a very high write amplification factor. I think the site I have mentioned before had a few good calculations about that. Got it: http://ssdeurope.com/ssd-explained [...] 0a8310476c
Very important is also the RAM being used on the SSD and in-built functions such as garbage collection and TRIM.
No RAM means poor performance and quicker wearout.
No Garbage collection means clog-up of the SSD over time and performance drop.
Just checkout the HD tune results for Photofast Gmonster V5 and compare against a Samsung SSD... the graph shows it all.